Surface Blog

Welcome to Surface, a blog by Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. Join us in discussion about hardwood flooring wood grains & styles, home decor, green building products, trends and more.

Eastern White Pine—not as soft as you think

Posted by Christine Halvorson

You absolutely love the pumpkin-colored appearance of Old Growth Eastern White Pine flooring. You’re sold on the antique look of the wide planks. You are happily anticipating the mellowing patina of the Pine’s color as the years go by. But you have concerns about the “softer side” of installing a Pine floor:

Will it hold up to the daily rigors of your toddler and 6-year-old’s playtime?
What will happen to your Pine floor after several months of living under your 80-pound golden retriever?
How will it look after many years of muddy shoes, dropped forks and knives, furniture moving, and general everyday use?

Old Growth Eastern White Pine isn’t the hardest wood used in Carlisle flooring, but it is certainly the most original and authentic wood used to craft traditional wide plank floors.

It is the wood that is most cherished among homeowners seeking an antique look. If you are looking for a perfectly flawless floor year in and year out, you might want to go with a harder wood. But Old Growth Eastern White Pine flooring is for you if you value the traditions of the past, including your family’s own history told in the endearing “dings and dents” this Pine floor acquires over the years.

On the other hand, our Old Growth Eastern White Pine is harder than you might think. Each of our floors is made from Old Growth timber that is 100 or more years old and has been sawn from the center of the tree (the most dense part). It is then slowly air- and kiln-dried, which makes it extremely rugged and durable. Because Old Growth Eastern White Pine is such a resilient wood, it stands up to the expansion and contraction that comes with the changing seasons. This ability to adapt to change is one of the things that makes our Pine a durable, long-lasting floor. While you can sand the floor again after several years to remove signs of wear, we’ve found our clients just touch up the floor with Tung Oil after about five years.

Posted on January 21, 2010 at 08:33 PM in Customer Stories • (0) Comments
Monday Morning Mailbag: Delivery of prefinished White Oak floor delights this customer

Posted by Christine Halvorson

We got this nice note the other day to our Sales & Design associate Laura, from a customer who had just had her brand new pre-finished floor delivered to her home to be installed.

The customer, Marlies Venier, had found Carlisle online and ordered 1,600 square feet of the pre-finished White Oak, in 7-inch widths. The boards were finished with a saw kerf effect. (See more about our handmade surfaces here.)

Venier, it seems, had had water damage in her home and needed to replace the floors. She placed her order after working with Laura to get some samples. Here’s what she wrote to us the day her floor arrived at her home in mid-December.

Hi Laura,

Just finished unloading the floor, we love it, it is beautiful, the nicest floor we have ever seen. Thank you for being so great through the whole process, so excited to have a Carlisle floor! Have a great New Year…All the best in 2010.
Cheers,
Marlies Venier

We always love to get notes like this, especially when the customer comes to us through an unhappy circumstance like flood-ruined floors!

Pre-finished wide plank floors are still relatively new to Carlisle. We find that those who choose it love the convenience of being able to install it immediately upon arrival and not have to go through the staining process. You can read more about our pre-finished floors here.

Posted on January 11, 2010 at 01:03 PM in Customer Stories • DIY • (0) Comments
Nice character, rich brown tones draw customers to Hickory wide plank floors

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Wendy and Ken Gendron of Ashburnham, Massachusetts (not so far from Carlisle headquarters in New Hampshire) discovered us in “This Old House” magazine and got in touch about two years ago. They recently sent us these nice photos of their completed floor.

After visiting our shop back then, the couple had decided on a “50/50” blend of Country and Select Hickory, in 6- to 12-inch widths. This means their boards would have some real character traits, but wouldn’t appear too rustic. What they loved about the samples was the rich brown tones that come from the heartwood of these trees. That heartwood in Hickory is not easy to come by, as our Don Carlisle will tell you. Only a few trees in a Hickory stand would be likely to yield heartwood that strong, plus have the length and width that we need—the odds might be 1 or 2 out of 100!

The Gendrons installed and finished the floor themselves. In the second photo above, you can see how it looked before the Urethane was applied. Anyone with basic do-it-yourself skills can install a Carlisle floor. We always send along complete instructions before the order arrives. After that, we’re available seven days a week for questions. See our complete guide to installing our floors here.

See other examples of Hickory and read more about this fascinating wood.

Posted on January 7, 2010 at 03:40 PM in Customer Stories • DIY • (0) Comments
Up in Edmonton, Alberta, reclaimed wood floors gain celebrity status

Posted by Christine Halvorson

A 26-month labor of love up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has resulted in a spectacular, mountain chalet-style house designed mostly by the owner and painstakingly filled with materials that celebrate the natural world. Conrad Poirier set out to break the mold for today’s houses. Inspired by the author Sarah Susanka who wrote “The Not So Big House,” Conrad decided to focus on the details, rather than on a massive size, when it was time for he and his wife to build a new home. The end result was a home of 3,100 square feet. “Ours is the smallest house in the neighborhood, but it’s the most unique,” he says now about his home that sits in an upscale neighborhood within the city on the North Saskatchewan River.

“Thinking about the details got me to thinking about what was one of the most important details in a house, and that was the floor, which led me to wonder what I could do that would be different from what everyone else is doing,” Conrad said.

Conrad is a Senior Radiation Therapist at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, and his wife, Carla, is a food scientist and runs her own company, Nutriview. The couple purchased the land for the house in 2004 and began the building process in 2007. In between, Conrad and Carla spent a lot of time designing and researching what they wanted in their custom-built home. When they chose Peter Jungen of Habitat Studio and Workshop, Ltd. in Calgary as their builder and architect, Conrad became the general contractor and designer, working alongside Peter in the process. Conrad doesn’t have a background in building or architecture or design, he just thinks of it all as “kind of a hobby.” (We’ll bring you more about Peter in another blog post in the near future. )

Conrad began touring other custom-built homes in their area, often traveling to Calgary where there was more of them to see. None of the floors he saw excited him very much. He also scoured magazines for ideas. He believes it was in one of them that he saw an ad for Carlisle floors. He had also been visiting home shows and hearing a lot about reclaimed wood, which piqued his interest. Peter had him visit a home where a reclaimed gymnasium floor had been installed, which Conrad said intrigued him.

Above: An interior designer Conrad worked with had the idea for using the oak floors in combination with heated slate in the Poirier home’s entryway._

So, he put in a call to Carlisle headquarters and ultimately reached Dan O’Neil in our Los Angeles Design Center. Dan ended up sending Conrad a package of materials that included videos and photos of all the various wood and stain combinations. Ultmimately, Dan, Peter and Conrad settled together on Northern Red and White Oak that was to be reclaimed from an original 1800s saw mill on Route 2 in Hollywood, West Virginia. Conrad ordered up 1,200 square feet of it.

Read More…

Posted on January 4, 2010 at 08:00 AM in Customer Stories • Green Building • (0) Comments
Monday Morning Mailbag: Orlando couple writes with news of durability in Carlisle’s White Oak

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Scanned_Card_Switzer_Debbie_Coble.pdf
Justin and Debbie Coble of Orlando, Florida, had a Carlisle White Oak floor installed in their home over a year ago. They recently dropped us a note (attached here) to say how impressed they were with the way the floor has held up to their two toddlers and their frequent guests. The Cobles worked with Peter Switzer of Carlisle and had actually used Carlisle floors before.

Posted on December 28, 2009 at 02:02 PM in Customer Stories • Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments